


Reality

by Trobadora



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 17:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17471882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: Every day, Jack tries to convince himself this is real. And every day, doubt creeps into him again.





	Reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuroraCloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraCloud/gifts).



Afterwards, there's only Jack.

There are people around, but he knows none of them, and he doesn't care to. Jack stays in the village closest to the facility - the former facility. It's a crater now, and with all the attention the explosion has drawn, no one takes him for anything other than one more reporter or disaster tourist. No one knows anyone actually got out, so no one can tell Jack himself was inside.

The Doctor let him walk out, that day. Didn't try to hold Jack back when he turned his back and left, ignoring the confused questions of all the other test subjects freed from the artificial reality they'd been trapped in. The Doctor was saving them; Jack didn't need to be there.

"All right, now, everyone inside -" 

Those are the last words he heard the Doctor say. He didn't wait until he heard the TARDIS dematerialise. That sound is burned into his memory, anyway. It would have proved nothing, no more than the Doctor's presence, those brown eyes intent and burning with time itself. None of it proves any of this is real.

So he walked out, watched the explosion from a distance, unsatisfied, unsettled.

Days later, the world is still distant. Jack isn't a part of it, doesn't trust it any more. Hasn't known how to, for too long.

Better that he walked out; better that the Doctor left. Jack has no energy left for the kinds of shenanigans that follow the Doctor around, much less for a version that may or may not be real. And the Doctor, of course, has no patience for quiet.

Jack rubs his wrists. The marks from the injectors are finally fading, no longer an angry red. They're still testimony to his captors' abilities to subvert even Jack's exceptional physiology. His body never rejected their drugs. 

The facility is destroyed now, and the Doctor mentioned a virus to take care of the data, but it's still not a comforting thought.

Jack takes long walks every day, breathes in the cool, rainy air, tastes wet grass on the gusts of wind carrying across the meadows. Sometimes he leans back against a tree, trying to feel the ground he's standing on. Trying to see the sky above him, the rapid pass of darker-grey clouds across a lighter-grey sky, and believe in it.

Today his fingers, compulsively, pick at the tree bark under his palm. It crumbles, dry under the surface wetness, and when Jack lifts his fingers, there are slimy-brown smears on his skin. 

Real. No different to his senses than the simulation was, but real. He has to trust that it is. The Doctor was there, after all. Who could simulate that?

(Anyone who has Jack's memories at their disposal, of course. Anyone.)

The Doctor did what the Doctor always does: saved everyone held in that facility. Took them home, Jack is sure. Meanwhile, Jack hadn't been able to bring himself to stay and help. 

He'd walked out, too unsure whether he'd truly escaped, or only been shunted into another level of the simulation. It had happened before, after all. 

He'd left, unable to trust that _this_ was different. 

Since then, every day, Jack tries to convince himself. And every day, doubt creeps into him again, like chill seeping through the seams of his new coat, through the supposedly weather-proofed fabric. Like water dripping down from the leaves above and trickling into his collar.

Time, he knows. Time will mend this, too, and if anyone has time, it's him. Even if this _is_ another simulation, nothing lasts forever, except him. He can outlast anything, can't he? 

Jack laughs, bitterly, and tries for even breaths, tries for calm as he goes to take another walk through the woods.

As always, he circles back to the crater. There are fewer spectators crowding against the quickly-erected barrier now; the novelty value has already worn off. But in the background, there's something that wasn't there before: a blue box. One that shouldn't be there.

Jack freezes. _Not real, then,_ is his first thought.

He should turn around. He should walk away. Instead, Jack watches the Doctor, long brown coat and all, stepping out of the TARDIS, looking across to where Jack is standing. Jack watches the Doctor watch him for a minute, then turn away, back into the TARDIS.

Jack watches the TARDIS dematerialise with burning eyes. This can't be real. Or he's hallucinating. The Doctor isn't the type to stick around for the aftermath. Unless -

Well. Maybe the Doctor _is_ actually checking up on Jack. Maybe he's making sure Jack isn't building a vortex manipulator out of scrap, so he can get back at the people who built this place. 

Maybe.

(Jack considered it. But meddling with the timeline has never worked out in his favour before. Besides, what's the point, in a reality he's not at all sure is even real?)

Jack tries to shake the unreality of it all. Nothing has changed. He's still not sure. But the next day, the TARDIS is there again. 

It makes no sense. This _has_ to be a simulation. The Doctor isn't someone who stays; Jack has known that for a long time. Has struggled with it, railed against it, accepted it. Come to love it as part of who the Doctor is. But the day after that, again, the TARDIS is there, and the Doctor is leaning against the door, looking across.

Restlessness crawls over Jack's skin, the urge to walk over there, to grab the Doctor by his lapels and shake him, demand he say what he thinks he's doing.

He doesn't, not until another day later.

"Sure this is real yet?" the Doctor greets him, flippantly, and all right, that's more like it.

"No," Jack snaps, and the Doctor grins, of all things.

"Come on in, then." 

The Doctor actually takes Jack by the arm, and it's the first time anyone's touched him since he got out. Jack freezes, eyes going wide, but the Doctor's grip is inexorable as he pulls Jack towards the TARDIS door.

They step inside, and -

Oh. _Oh._

It sings all around him, winds itself around the borders of his mind like an embrace: the TARDIS welcoming him, beautiful and present and _there_.

Not at all the unobtrusive light touch the TARDIS's telepathic circuitry usually prefers. She knows, she knows. And she's there, real, without a question.

A last shred of doubt: could someone simulate _this_ , from Jack's memory? And the answer, quick and certain: no. A telepathic species might have, but there was no evidence at all of any understanding of telepathy in his captors' work.

No. This is real.

Jack turns to the Doctor, who is grinning at him. "Why didn't you -"

"Insist? I could have dragged you inside the other day, yeah. But you needed the space. So I just skipped ahead a few times. Same difference." The Doctor slings an arm around Jack's shoulder. "Now come on, let's get you checked out properly. I'm really not happy about those drugs they used on you."

Jack swallows heavily. "Doctor. Sorry I walked out."

"Right. Sorry. Yes, me too," the Doctor says incoherently, scrunching up his nose. "Took me a bit to find you, but I did in the end, didn't I?"

Jack blinks, shocked. "You were looking for me?"

A diffident shrug. "You didn't know? One of your messages got through. Clever bit of hacking, even if they did catch on to you."

Jack remembers now - he'd worked with a woman back at the start, the first time he'd discovered they were inside a simulation. He hadn't seen her after that, and he'd thought none of their attempts had succeeded. "Good," he says faintly.

The Doctor looks at him critically. "You look like you need a rest. A proper one, with the TARDIS in your dreams."

Jack's chest feels tight, and he swallows. "Thank you," he manages, but the Doctor only furrows his brow at him, as if he isn't sure what he's being thanked for.

So Jack does the only thing he can think of: he reaches out, cups the Doctor's face between his hands, and brushes their lips together. _Thank you,_ he thinks fervently, but doesn't say again out loud. Some things are better communicated in other ways, anyway.

When he lets go, the Doctor grins at him. "There you are," he says, eyes gleaming, and he's bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Also, stop it, because I meant it about checking you out. So let's get on with it now."

Get on with it they do, and with the TARDIS singing him into reality and the Doctor next to him, the dullness that's been clouding around Jack starts to fade.

Jack had thought it couldn't be real, the Doctor being here. He'd forgotten an important truth: the Doctor's isn't the type to stay, no - but that doesn't mean he never comes back.


End file.
